Wednesday, February 22, 2012

Have you ever given your Dad a wedgie?

Well have ya??

Just kidding. Strange title for my February blog post, I know, but it just seemed like one of those classic comments from the month that I couldn't just leave in my brain to become part of the cobwebs and hence forgotten. It was from Orrin (6)playing...a hem...Truth or Dare, with his little cousins Aubrey and Kennedy. I thought it sounded a little suspicious so I snuck outside his room to have a listen. What I heard was Orrin asking Kennedy if she had "ever given her Dad a Wedgie?". As it turned out I figured I didn't really need to worry.

The other comment that I thought was also in the running for February blog title fame was actually from Jesse (DH). We were at the swimming centre in Leduc for Family Day. There are a few different swimming areas, there is a lane pool, two hot tubs, a toddler area, a area for the kids between toddler area and lane pool and a water slide. Jacob of course heads straight for the toddler area where the slides and equipment are as tall as he is. He is in there splashing and leaping around, more at home than a pig in mud. And that is when Jesse says to me "just happy to be a 100lb toddler!". One of those moments where if you don't laugh, you'll cry. After all, when you really get down to it, he is a a 100lb toddler.... so I laughed :)

February 2012 was definitely a month of ups and downs. One of the ups was Orrin who is 6 and 3/4, finally lost his first tooth! It was very loose, but he refused to yank it so it came out at school while he was having his snack. I went to his classroom to drop off his lunch and all the kids in the class yell at me "ORRIN LOST HIS TOOTH!" Apparently it was big news in grade 1 that day! I am happy to report that the tooth fairy actually remembered to come that very night (our tooth fairy tends to be a tad unreliable...). Although I did warn him that if it is a bit too chilly for her, she may not show. Since the great event, the little guy has become quite concerned with how a bigger tooth is going to take the place of a smaller tooth. He will spend time in front of the mirror , hashing the dilemma over in his head asking me "How is a big tooth going to fit in their Mom?!" (the problem never actually occurred to me before...Orrin tends to worry about things that most people don't even think about...and replied (scrambling) "Don't worry buddy, it will fit, that is just what it does." Mother of the year award for me, I know. Pathetic.

One of the downs was Jake's Epilepsy coming out of hibernation. I have a pretty good run-down of his story here http://childdisability.blogspot.com/2009_04_01_archive.html

Thankfully we were at home due to Teacher Convention, I completely lost it and called 911. I actually didn't realize it was a seizure at first because it didn't look like any he had previously. It only affected one side of his body, so my first thought was stroke not seizure. It only lasted 30 seconds or so, but it really wiped him out. He was taken to the hospital and then discharged a few hours later. Previously his seizures would always happen in clusters. His pattern would be 1, then two hours later he would have another, then one hour later, another then he would start having them so close together that he would barely come out of one, when the other would start. It wasn't unusual for him to have 20 Tonic or Tonic-Clonic seizures in a 24 hour period. Then over a couple of days they would taper off. He would be good for two weeks, and it would start all over again. This was my fear. I thought 'here we go again..'. But he has been perfectly fine! His Neurologist Dr Richer at the Stollery Childrens Hospital in Edmonton gave him an EEG (measures electrical activity in the brain) and could not believe the results! He said he had to double check he was reading the right one, because it was so 'normal'. Jacob just baffles him! He cannot believe how stable he has been, and for so long because of his history. He has no idea why, or how. So for now he is being weaned back onto an anti-epileptic drug and we will see how things go.

Because of Jacob's shenanigans a few days earlier our plans for a fancy night out at the Gun's & Hoses Ball where replaced with a night sharing our bed with an 11 year old boy. So the next day we decided to take the kids to the Calgary Flames Super Skills competition in Calgary. It started at 11am and Calgary is a three hour drive so we picked up Adam(DN) at the crack of dawn and set on our way. It was a perfect NHL hockey experience for the kids and we all had a lot of fun. Afterwards we went to lunch and drove back home!

This is at our Acreage, just out of town. The kid's favorite winter past-time....!

As I write this, we head off on our Australian trip in just two weeks! So my next blog post will be from the great land down-under.